More specifically, the ODOT paid Strava $20,000 for data on 17,700 riders:

Last fall, the agency paid $20,000 for one-year license of a dataset that includes the activities of about 17,700 riders and 400,000 individual bicycle trips totaling 5 million BMT (bicycle miles traveled) logged on Strava in 2013. The Strava bike "traces" are mapped to OpenStreetMap.

I'm relatively certain that this is the highest amount of money ever paid for information on Fredly behavior, especially when you consider that the ODOT probably could have opened a Strava account and gotten it all for free. As a basis for comparison, "Bicycling" will give you their whole subscriber list for nineteen bucks--and that comes with one year of "Bicycling" and a lifetime of subscription renewal harassment!

So what do they mean? Well, first, Strava paid about $1.13 per Fred, which means your little stretchy-clothes existence is about as worthless as you think it is. Second, if 17,700 Freds made 400,000 trips in a year, that means the average Strava Fred is riding his or her bike about 2.26 times a year, which sounds about right.* Third, and perhaps most significant, at 5 million miles ridden, each Strava Fred is riding his or her bike about 283 miles a year. So, if they're doing 283 miles a year but only riding their bike a little more than twice, then each Strava Fred basically does two (2) baronial 100+ mile epics per annum, and then spends the rest of the year wanking or cleaning out the rain gutters or smelling coffee grounds appreciatively or whatever else it is that Oregonian Freds do when they're not riding bicycles.**

*Oops! That should have been 22.6! Decimal points and math are tricky!**Oops again! The Freds are actually doing like 22 12-mile rides a year, which does seem much more Strava-y...

Now, I'm sure I'm grossly misinterpreting this data, but that's how I prefer to look at it because I think Strava is incredibly dorky and matters such as "truth" are inconsequential to me.

ODOT Active Transportation Policy Lead Margi Bradway is in charge of the "Strava Bicycle Data Project". The north Portland resident, mother of two and active bicycle racer, says the idea came to her during a bike ride last summer. "It was during the Rapha lunch ride," she shared with us on the phone yesterday. "Everyone was checking Strava and I started to wonder, 'What if we used this data?'" Bradway then turned to Chris Distefano, a veteran of the bike industry who currently works in Rapha's marketing department. He instantly loved the idea and connected Bradway with a manager at Strava.

Reportedly, Rapha's cut of the deal was an undisclosed amount of Strava KOMs.

As for why ODOT even wants this information in the first place, it's because they believe that if they can better understand the migratory behavior of the Oregonian Fred then they can better tailor the infrastructure to cyclists:

The problem for many transportation agencies today is that, while bicycling is on the rise (for both transportation and recreation), there remains a major lack of data. This gap in data makes it much harder to justify bicycle investments, plan for future bicycle traffic growth, illustrate the benefits of bike infrastructure investments, and so on. It also makes non-auto use of roads very easy for agencies to overlook. And while ODOT and many cities do bike counts already, they only measure one location for a short period of time.
Which, as I was pleased to see Jonathan Maus point out, is somewhat problematic, since thank the Lord Jesus Christ the typical Strava user is in no way representative of the typical bicycle user:And while this dearth of data continues to plague the active transportation field, the proliferation of GPS devices and smartphones, and the popularity of apps like Strava and Portland-based Ride With GPS, are creating a huge and valuable user database. That being said, there is a major drawback to using Strava data: it's not representative of all bicycle users. Not even close. Most Strava users tend to be serious riders on training rides. But as anyone can see on the Strava Global Heat Map, there's still much to be learned by analyzing where Strava users ride.
So are the implications of all this? Is Oregon on the cusp of developing a system of roadways for the Freds and by the Freds? Will other states follow? Only time will tell. All I know at this point is that I'm thanking the Lord Jesus Christ that I don't live in Oregon, because if I found out my tax dollars were going to Strava so they can figure out where all the Freds are riding I'd be extremely pissed off. I mean really, this is a state that can't even de-ice its roads in winter, and they're giving 20 grand to Strava? Do you know how much road salt that could buy?!? (Answer: I have no fucking idea.)
I will say though that the above-referenced "Strava Global Heat Map" is fascinating, and naturally I headed right to my hometown:

It basically told me what I already know, which is that most New York City Freds spend their entire existence doing one of three things: riding circles around Prospect Park; riding circles around Central Park, and riding back and forth to Nyack.

However, I was somewhat surprised to see how many Freds seem to head east along the Long Island Expressway service road. I mean sure, I know about the "Triangle Ride" and all that, but the blue line heading east is almost as thick and juicy as the blue line heading up to Nyack, from which we can conclude that New York City Fred-dom is divided into two tribes: the Western Freds, and the Eastern Freds:

It's fairly obvious to me that the entire metropolitan area will soon be subsumed in an apocalyptic War of the Freds in which the Western Freds and the Eastern Freds battle each other for total domination, and that Strava is currently salivating at the prospect of a seven-figure payout from the New York City Department of Transportation.

Most of all though I was pleased to see very little Strava activities on my favorite little climbs and routes, where there was a mere dusting of blue. I can live with that. Sure, nobody likes to come across the odd mouse dropping, but it's certainly better than a full-on infestation.
In other (literally) hard-hitting news, a commenter on yesterday's post furnished a link to this story about how helments don't really do all that much for kids:

Putting aside the debate over whether helmets are truly necessary in all of these situations, there’s something about helmets that you might not know: They won’t protect your kids from common head injuries that may cause long-term problems.
In other words, helments are pretty good at saving your five year-old's life when he lays down his Suzuki GSX-R750 at 95mph, but they probably don't matter that much when he takes a spill on his Razor scooter.

Oh, and in a revelation that will stun most Americans, helments actually can't do your parenting for you!Also, don’t assume that if your kid wears a helmet, his head is going to be safe. You’ve got to use common sense too. As Nicholas Day pointed out in a 2011 Slate article on why he won’t make his kids wear sledding helmets, head injuries are to some extent avoidable with good parental decision-making. “What's called for are more common-sense instructions from parents to their kids, not another layer of padding,” he writes. Don’t let your kid sled near trees or roads or tons of other people. Don’t let your kid bike or use a scooter or skateboard in busy traffic. Speak up if your kids’ coaches are making them do risky practice drills that involve head collisions, or if they are allowed to head the ball when they play soccer: the American Youth Soccer Organization encourages coaches to not teach or practice heading to kids under the age of 10. Finally, if your kids play sports in which head injuries are common—these include football, soccer, hockey, rugby and basketball—you might put them on a neck strengthening regimen, because “to the extent that you can see a hit coming and you can tense the neck muscles, the head is not going to be moved out of position as much,” Cantu says.
Good advice, but unfortunately Americans will continue to rely on their SUVs to do their parenting for them until they're explicitly told otherwise.

I didn't see one "bicycle," let alone one that was walking or in a club in that last vid. I saw insane asylum nurse lady walk, and some kind of tricycles change colors, multiply by cell division and then meld back together into some trippy kaleidoscope tornado.....and what's she gonna do, lug that thing up the stairs when she gets home?

I hate to undermine the column or anything, but 400,000 divided by 17,700 is 22.6, so Freds are riding 10X as often as you think. On the other hand, they're not baronial centuries, they're runs to Dairy Queen.

Personally, I thought the walk/bicycle looked interesting. Maybe it's heavy, as already pointed out. But, if the 'inventor' were able to make the leg motion more efficient, say, by having the feet go in a more circular motion while the legs went up and down? And gave the person a place to sit? I think then they'd really be on to something.

That heat map is fascinating. If I'm reading the Chicago portion right, nobody's been down my street. I don't have Strava (my phone is a cheapie, only makes phone calls -- what a concept -- and my wife says it was like pulling teeth to even get me to carry that), so I can't light the place up, but I can see that a couple of people have gone to the grocery without turning off their phones -- blue dots inside the building. There must be a lot of interference in built-up places like downtown, because I see a lot of diagonal routes where there are no roads, and quite a few dots in the river -- and a couple out in Lake Michigan. Still, this is fun, and a map junkie like me could get lost in this thing for quite a while.

Congrats on discovering the Eastern Fred Migratory Route. I look forward to a Fly6-enhanced field report.

Oh but Wildcat I think you moved a decimal point bla bla bla. Also it is spelled lieu bla bla bla which is French for "place" e.g. "in place of."

Also, I think you might have dropped a decimal point and misspelled lieu.

"All I know at this point is that I'm thanking the Lord Jesus Christ that I don't live in Oregon, because if I found out my tax dollars were going to Strava so they can figure out where all the Freds are riding I'd be extremely pissed off."

YES, EXACTLY. And I'm calling bullshit on the "lack of data to justify bicycle investments" argument too. Since when is shit based on data? All the climate change, peak oil, "we are fucked" data don't even slow the pace of "investment" in (i.e. throwing away money on) automobile infrastructure, so fuck me. Besides which, make a decision, make the investment, and WA LA (sp?) your data suddenly reflect huge bikeen numbers. The shit is quantum. Make it happen, "leaders." I guess they're trying. But if this is how things are done, I want my share of the pork.

10 seconds of "w" "b" and "c" and I was like fuck this Sesame-Street shit.

One more thing Wildcat, I believe the answer's 22.6 [slap] OW! and don't know OOF HEY CUT IT OUT... and also in French it's spelled... OW

All seriousness aside, though, I use these goofy heatmaps to demonstrate to the idiots in power than bikes do in fact use several of our suburban streets. It would be even more helpful if more commuters would use the app, so we could show that people actually sometimes use the roads and paths on bikes to get to work.

A very nice lady called our house to ask questions on behalf of our very nice county executive last week. She ended her survey with an open-ended question -- what improvements would we like to see? My spouse answered thoughfully, explaining how we need to retrofit our suburban car sewers into complete streets, with bike lanes, bus shelters, sidewalks, crosswalks, median havens etc.

The very nice lady was very confused. She asked again: "Do you mean like filling potholes?"

No, I mean like making the road safer for people who are walking across them or riding their bikes on them to get to stores or to work.

Very nice lady literally had no inkling of this possibility.

At this point, we're just trying to get on the bleeping list of possibilities.

That's because strava has no accuracy at all. None. Few seem to understand their numbers are junk and time spent analizing those numbers wasted. This is 'merkuh, so everyone ignore that and buy! Buy! Buy!.

Whomever did those diagonal routes can set up segments on them and be QOM forevers!!!

I went to a DOT long range planning meeting last week (as a rep from anther state agency.

There were two bike adovcates there (not me I'm just a freeloading, infrastrucutre using, commuter). One of these guys seemed normal, but then they both advocated excise taxes on all things bicycling to pay for bike infrastructure.

Then some other people proposed excise taxes on shoes to pay for sidewalks.

"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."Atwood H. Townsend, editor of Good Reading, various editions from at least 1960

1. migratory behavior of the Oregonian Fred... Ah, that's how the coconut shells got to Portland.

2. After reading how they don't work, I sure glad bike helments weren't around when I was a kid cause my first instinct as a kid would be to see how well it works and purposely crash headfirst into things. Thank the Lord Jesus Christ I avoided all those accidents.

3. Oh and got the joke, knew it was a joke, read the 947 corrections, but seriously dude, you shoulda spelled it lieu. Bad move. Don't let it happen again, m'kay?

Greenbelt,That's the best argument for Strava I've heard. I see a lot of commuters who probably don't show up -- just riding from a to b and back, like me. And going to the grocery, or restaurants. It'd be good to see how we use the roads/paths for everyday stuff, not just when we put on the silly clothes.

JB, my wife uses Map My Ride and Map My Run for the same reason, just to see how far she's gone.

Babble,Pretty funny. "Yes, she's going for the 3-pound box of strawberries and -- OH, she got distracted by the wine on sale..." If I had Strava it would have shown me dithering between florists the day before Easter. This one? Or this one? Or the grocery?

Fill the 3 gal. bucket and pour it into the 5 gal. bucket. Fill the 3 gal. bucket again and pour what will fit into the 5 gal. bucket. That leaves 1 gal. in the 3 gal. bucket. Pour out the 5 gal. bucket until empty. Then pour the 1 gal. from the 3 gal. bucket into the 5 gal. bucket. Re-fill the 3 gal. bucket and pour the whole thing into the 5 gal. bucket. Wow. My head hurts. Too much thinking for a Friday afternoon.

You could also fill the 5 gal bucket and top off the 3 gal bucket, leaving 2 gals in the 5 gal bucket. Empty the 3 gallon bucket and pour the 2 gallons from the 5 gal bucket into the 3 gal bucket. Fill up the 5 gal bucket and top off the 3 gal bucket leaving 4 gal in the 5 gal bucket.

I find it really funny that the heavy strava routes in Boston (and holy crap they're everywhere) are often these super-low-speed multi-use paths and busy urban streets with lots of other cyclists and random people parked in the bike lanes.

I was out this morning on the SW corridor - it's generally mostly very attractive yuppie women in dresses riding euro-bikes - I'm wearing work clothes and puttering along enjoying my low-stress commute (and enjoying the "view") when some full body spandex dude with a fucking aero helmet races by "on your left." I catch up to this guy 4 times at lights - he's all sweaty and breathing heavy - meanwhile I'm drinking a coffee and working on my scone... I'm betting he was strava all the way to work.

Engineer solution: Fill the 5-gallon bucket. Whatever you need 4 gallons for, you'll have plenty. Good enough. Write this into the code as an acceptable shortcut with likely conservative results, and collect a fat check.

McFly, I can see in that logic that you probably figured it out, but it got lost in translation. Get Li Wong to type it for you next time. I was all ready for the win but Son of Spock's saved me the effort and the glory.

Decimal points are tricky, like all those new-fangled Napoleonic metric system things. Stick to good old imperial fractions for the good of us all. I see everyone pointing fingers at the mistakes, but no kudos for getting the word haberdashers into your post. Seems like the wrong locution for Rapha though; I think of haberdashers as offering reasonable value for basic wares….

Where is McFly’s request for the ODOT MHLF photo? Must be too busy with his sums.

The fill-each-bucket-half-way (2.5 + 1.5 = 4) method also works as long as the buckets are vertically symmetrical and have flat bottoms. They do not have to be cylindrical. Fill each bucket and tip it so water slowly flows out. When you can just barely see the edge of the bottom, the bucket is half full. You do not need a ruler to measure the depth.

The time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork, Bret, and some other Fred wearing his new CVNDSH fururistic sex turtle helment, travel towards each other on the GWB, each beginning at one end. Bret travels at time machine worm-hole mph and the other Fred travels at woo-hoo-hoo-hoo 46mph, obviously. The goose from Traverse City, MI, who is on a Strava training flight shits all over everyone on the bridge because he cannot believe what he is seeing. He is fuckin pissed, but nobody know why. Not even Confucius. He's just an angry goose now traveling at 90 mph. First he flies to attack Bret, then to Fred, then back to Bret, continuing for virtual infinity until Bret and Fred ruin $40,000 of crabon and crash into each other trying to avoid a Citi bike tourist asking some douche on a Magna which way to the intersection of Seamen and Cumming? So, how many miles will the crazy muther fuckin goose from Traverse City, MI log on Strava? For bonus points, will he get KOM?

Firstly, there's no Friday quiz. In and of itself not unusual (Snobby has shirked his responsibilities in this regard previously), but an imposter wouldn't be familiar enough with the Snobby leitmotif to credibly compile the quiz.

Twice, the author of this suspicious article thanks the "Lord Jesus Christ". The real Snobby is of course renowned for his Satanism and while he might ironically thank Christ he wouldn't do it twice. He would do it just once or multiple times in every paragraph.

This mountebank defensively asserts in reply to a commentator that he/she knows how to spell lieu and the misspelling was a joke. Our Snobby wouldn't reply to such a post at all or if he did, it would be to mock the poster.

In another reply on this page the trickster claims "night" instead of "knight" was a typo in a previous blog. 1) Snobby wouldn't remember what he wrote five minutes earlier, let alone on another day and, 2) no way would he admit it was a typo, he'd claim it two was deliberate.

"Suzuki GSX-R750" rolls very easily off the keyboard of whomever it was that wrote this peculiar piece. I can't believe that the real Snobby would be so familiar with motorcycle appellations.

Not only did the comment count exceed 100 much sooner than normal, the 100th poster (" Too thirsty to think about math" at 4:06 by my account) didn't claim the distinction! When has that ever happened!?

The walking bicycle video link appears to be broken. This, of course, is an indication of nefarious activity.

There's many more iniquitous peculiarities to found in this blog, too many to catalogue here, but suffice to say our dear Snobby has been kidnapped and had his identity assumed by a double intent on evil doing.

Actually since helmets make bike magazines and bike stores and bike companies a lot of money. You never hear all the stats that have been coming out on the subject. Look at what the laws have done for the kids in Alberta.

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1250.html

Kind of explains that why bikes were all over the middle schools and elementary schools 20-30 years ago, but now there are only a couple owned by the school facility out front of them now a days.

Helmets are a scam. Bicycle snake oil, and even sleazier than selling Fred data to the state of Oregon.

I am a fragile elderly person, but BACK WHEN I WAS YOUNG I grew up in a very mountainous and foresty countryside, we were not allowed in the house between breakfast and lunch and between lunch and dinner. We went sledding in the said woods until everyone had lost a tooth or two crashing into trees and rocks, the whole point of "baby teeth" was that it didn't matter since after you had learned your lesson you were getting a whole new set.

No matter how I slice these stats, my head is swelling dangerously with ego turgidity. (quick - don helmet to contain brains!) If we throw out outliers, like the three or four serious riders (think Babble) who ride ten hours every day, and all those guys who just want to draw their penis really big on a map (think Cerne Giant), then the typical Strava rider rides about 25 miles a year and lies about the rest. I apparently suck a great deal less than I thought, even with my ancient rotten-stick legs and country-club attitude. In any case, garbage in, garbage out; don't hold your breath waiting for cycling-friendly policies.

Unknown at 9:38 - me too! Sledding in the woods, with snow blowing sideways into your eyes! And a couple of decades ago I took my two boys out to do that with them, and the younger, then maybe seven, when about to start a nice steep run, decided to just pull his wool cap down over his whole head because of the blowing snow! And down he went, blind, as we ran after him yelling, and he flew over a mogul and bounced off a tree trunk. After a while we went home and had hot chocolate.

Wildcalculation Machine, you should have stood your ground and stuck by your math. Everybody has a different perspective to offer and is entitled to their opinion. I for one, preferred the results of your math. Don't let yourself be bullied by the whole "peer reviewed science" fad - more like "peer pressure science" if you ask me. Follow your heart, and the answers to your equations will be revealed.

By the way, robot said to say: "uspena acid". Yes, robot is learning. Obviously attempting to communicate and join in with the general themes of humor, something about USPS, penises and drugs.

So I'm no Fred but I live in Portland & don't have a Strava app, I do ride, mostly to work & then all over & all weekend. I should pay the $19.99 , what ever, for the app & put in real use information. It's a great place to not use a car & to have the data info Fredcentric doesn't represent what's up here. Thanks for your insight. Cheers!

BSNYC has cleared that sketchy shark jump section of the trail behind the mall. The blog used to highlight interesting NYC riders, etc. Now he is just too busy in suburbia to make it to town. Quality of life increased, quality of blog tanked.

Babble I am going to take your comment completely out of context and inquire what features your "premium account" includes? Access to hot spots on your heat map? Guaranteed heart rate elevation? Special rides the common rube can't handle? Graphs and charts showing precisely when I peak?

Oh....and spooning? I know that 60% of the time what spooning leads to everytime.

Why so sceptic about ODOT? 20K USD? That's little if they are wiling to spent couple hudreds or even more to make cyclist life better and would spent them in completely wrong place. And I think for 20K they got not only heat maps, but all data. And with all the data you can filter out freds, recreational or commuting cyclists, or whatever, you don't need. I was doing such work last year, when our town participated in "competition" between dozen EU cities, what citys inhabitants will travel longest combined distance, when commuting by bicycle. After "competition" we got anonymized data (from endomondo in that case, not strada). Data was analyzed and will be used in infrastructure planning. Of course, there were freds, who wanted to "help" our town get higher in ranking and putting their training as commuting and distorting view, but with all the data (time, speed, duration, places where they ride) everything can be filtered into different maps and used accordingly. And you can think you know wery good what typical commuters or freds are, as did I. But after analysis we have got some siurprizes and I had to admit I'm not so typical commuter as I thought.

Actually Syed I think THIS site is the best Lol n Troll network, as it shares a number of important characteristics in common such as the prank peoples, funny peoples, funny jokes, prank images, fail pictures, lols and gags, fun unlimited and laughing unlimited.

Sponsored Linkway:

About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!